Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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Concerning Anglo-American activity, the Owens Valley story begins (like most narratives of the mid-nineteenth century West), with the discovery of gold in northern California in 1848 and the migration of argonauts to the gold fields that next year. After California obtained statehood and territories created for Utah and New Mexico in 1850, the West was divided into five military departments with fewer than 13,000 troops to garrison a frontier of more than a million square miles. Militia and local volunteers were necessary to support the national military effort. After Fort Sumter fell in 1861, most of the public believed that federal troops should protect the Pacific coast and that the Indian conflicts of the western interior should be a secondary priority. Just as the pre-Civil War period saw gold seekers moving from California to the mining fields of the West and Southwest, so too did a California Indian policy move eastward from the Pacific coast to the interior mountains and deserts of the Greater Southwest.